Better Background Checks Are First Step to Saner Gun Laws

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The work of Vice President Joseph
Biden’s task force on revamping U.S. gun laws is complete. The
next steps are up to the president and Congress.

We are heartened to hear that the Biden panel is
recommending a number of executive actions, such as increasing
federal research on gun violence and prioritizing prosecution of
those who lie on criminal background checks. These steps are
important and necessary, yet they are not sufficient. The
strength of the opposition must be tested, the public must be
engaged, and a legislative fight must be waged.

A good first battle should be a law requiring every gun
buyer to pass a criminal background check. An estimated 40
percent of gun sales take place in an unregulated private market
that enables virtually anyone with cash to secure an arsenal.

This is often called the “gun-show loophole” but it
extends to the Internet, the back alley, the garage and anywhere
private buyers and sellers do business. Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold, the two teens who committed mass murder in 1999 at
Columbine High School in Colorado, purchased their guns through
a straw buyer. When a licensed gun dealer wanted her to file
paperwork, the trio instead went to a gun show where the boys’
firearms were purchased and no questions were asked.

Before its relatively recent radicalization, the National
Rifle Association noted that a waiting period on gun purchases
could help “in preventing people with criminal records or
dangerous mental illness from acquiring guns.” Now, the
organization uses the gun-show loophole it championed to argue
that “gun laws don’t work.” Like the NRA’s war on research,
which has resulted in restrictions that deny policy makers basic
facts about gun violence, this stratagem must be defeated. No
gun law will work perfectly. (No traffic law or campaign-finance
law does, either.) But background checks can work vastly better
than they do.

Every gun purchase should require one. States that do a
poor job of keeping relevant records and of providing them to
the National Instant Criminal Background Check System should be
given incentives to comply fully. Mental health records --
perhaps a majority of them -- never enter the system. Seung-Hui
Cho had been diagnosed with emotional disorders yet passed a
background check to obtain the guns he used in the 2007 massacre
at Virginia Tech University. Jared Loughner, whose victims in
Tucson, Arizona, in 2011 included Representative Gabrielle
Giffords, passed a background check despite having told the Army
that he was a drug abuser.

Better records management may lack emotional appeal as a
rallying cry, but it’s a vital step in what promises to be a
long and arduous process. In fact, if we could choose only one
legislative remedy to enact this year, it would be comprehensive
background checks supported by greater scrutiny -- including
audits -- of shady gun dealers. A tiny percentage of dealers
supply an inordinate number of the guns used in crimes. These
dealers should be put on notice. If they continue to sell to
criminals, they must be shut down.

We are aware that comprehensive background checks can
accomplish only so much. Research by Garen Wintemute of the
University of California at Davis has found that most of those
incarcerated for firearms crimes purchased their guns on the
secondary market where background check aren’t conducted. Little
progress can be made so long as this unregulated bazaar remains
in operation.

Gun lobby theatrics often appear absurd to those outside
the fold, but they are well-financed, targeted and effective at
cowing legislators, including some Democrats, into endorsing the
lobby’s tragically narrow perspective.

The White House and its allies in Congress will have to be
shrewd. And they will have to be relentless. With polls showing
strong public support for comprehensive background checks, it’s
the right place to begin. Such legislation will make America
safer, and enable us to move to the next item on the list of
needed gun reforms.